HOFFA'S FATE WAS "DUST TO DUST"

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

If Jimmy Hoffa's remains are found on that Michigan
farm wonderfully named "Hidden Dreams," where the FBI
currently is searching, it will be a huge surprise to
Charles P. Brandt, the Delaware lawyer-turned-author who
wrote a tale about the hit that took out the Teamster
leader.

From what Brandt knows, he thinks Hidden Dreams has
as much to do with Hoffa as Giants Stadium in New
Jersey, another place where the body was supposed to be
deposited after Hoffa vanished more than 30 years ago.

Still, the digging goes on. Never mind that a lot of
people telling Hoffa stories could be selling tickets to
Elvis concerts on the side.

Brandt, who divides his time these days between Lewes
and Idaho, is a former chief deputy attorney general. He
became immersed in Hoffa lore after he switched to
defense work and helped to get an early prison release
for medical reasons in 1991 for Frank Sheeran, a
murderous and witty thug who was close to Hoffa and once
ran a Teamsters union in Delaware.

Brandt's association with Sheeran led to a 2004 book
called I Heard You Paint Houses, the name coming
from the first words Hoffa spoke to Sheeran. It was
crime slang, referring to the blood spattering from a
shooting.

Sheeran, who was 83 when he died in 2003, was on the
list of nine suspects fingered by the FBI in Hoffa's
disappearance on July 30, 1975, and after years of
hedging, Sheeran eventually told Brandt that he was the
triggerman. Brandt believes it, although his belief is
not universally accepted.

Hoffa became a marked man after he got out of prison
and tried to regain control of the Teamsters union.
Sheeran claimed he killed his patron because he almost
certainly would have been killed himself if he had not.
The hit went down near Detroit in a nondescript house
where Hoffa thought he was going to a meeting and
Sheeran was along for his protection. There was no
meeting.

"When Jimmy saw that the house was empty, that nobody
came out of any of the rooms to greet him, he knew right
away what it was," Sheeran said in I Heard You Paint
Houses.

"He turned fast, still thinking we were together on
the thing, that I was his backup. Jimmy bumped into me
hard. If he saw the piece in my hand, he had to think I
had it out to protect him.

"He took a quick step to go around me and get to the
door. He reached for the knob, and Jimmy Hoffa got shot
twice at a decent range -- not too close or the paint
splatters back at you -- in the back of the head behind
his right ear. My friend didn't suffer."

Sheeran said it was not part of his business to know
what happened to Hoffa's body. That job belonged to two
"cleaners" waiting on the premises to sanitize the site
and handle the removal.

Still, Sheeran said he was sure the plan was not to
bury Hoffa's corpse, but to cremate it, because of what
he was told beforehand by Russell Bufalino, the crime
boss who had introduced him to Hoffa and was in on the
plot.

"There won't be a body," Buffalino had said and
ground his thumb on the table where he was having dinner
with Sheeran. "Dust to dust."

Sheeran thought Hoffa was taken to a Detroit
incinerator owned by a crime figure, but Buffalino led
him to believe the body went to a funeral parlor under
friendly management, and he never knew for sure. Like
nearly everybody else the FBI thought was involved,
Buffalino is long dead.

Since the FBI began digging last week near Detroit at
the Hidden Dreams farm, which was owned by a Teamster
boss when Hoffa disappeared, Brandt has been fielding
telephone calls and e-mail from news reporters. He is
sticking by Sheeran's story.

"I believe Sheeran, and I'm someone who's very
experienced in cross-examination -- I've taught it --
although I have a vested interest," Brandt said.
"Mobsters do not bury anybody on land that they own. If
that happens, that will be the first."

Besides, the farm was too far out of the way. As
Sheeran told Brandt, "You most definitely couldn't go
driving around any kind of distance with Jimmy's body in
a car. . . . Who in their right mind would transport
such a high-profile package a block longer than was
necessary?"